


They Left You Here to Freeze

by agreylady



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:02:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agreylady/pseuds/agreylady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Petyr apologizes, and Lysa is swayed. She can keep a secret. Pre-canon, Lysa/Petyr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Left You Here to Freeze

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: Lysa/Petyr, mirrors, substitutions, possession, jealousy, denial, secrets
> 
> originally posted 6/20/12 for the gameofships porn battle

“You knew my wife as a child,” her husband says. “She is far too vain.”

His voice might be gentle, almost, but she is far too forlorn to focus. She cannot help but stare at - not her husband - but _Him_ , eyes wide and hungry. She wonders whether he will truly look back. It has been a long time. 

His grey eyes catch hers for a moment, almost playful. 

(She spent forever in the silver mirror, looking and wondering and worrying what he would see-)

His wicked smile comes to life. So does her heart

“Oh, of course,” Petyr says. “But Lady Arryn is lovely tonight, all the same.”

~

“He’s cold,” she says. “My lord husband. You see the way he thinks of me – as though I am nothing more than a mare.” She touches the tips of her braids. The Vale’s dress is severe, all clasps and capes. Her bare arms are cold underneath. She knows that they’ve gone puffy since the last miscarriage. It didn’t matter then, and it shouldn’t matter now; but it does, and it stings.

Petyr appraises her in the darkness. She wonders, with a shiver, when he became so cold. _Cat_ , she thinks. _Cat took all the warmth out of him._

“You should not be here, my lady.”

“Lysa. We grew up together. I will always be Lysa, and you will always be Petyr.”

He looks down at his parchment. So many papers, so suddenly. When was Petyr ever so concerned with his correspondence? “My lady, it is not proper for you to be here.”

“I am lady of the Vale – if I must have the title, then I shall do as I _please_.”

“You sound petulant. It is best your husband does not hear you speak so.”

She pauses. “Why are you here, Petyr?” Her voice sounds very soft. “You asked me how I am. But I know you are not here to see me.”

His face twitches. In the firelight, she can see him looking for something in her features, and when he finds it he softens. “Lysa… I could have no greater sadness than your unhappiness.”

She cannot reply.

“I never wanted this,” he says at last.

She kneels at his feet. She brings her hands up to his temples, where silver threads his hair, and he leans down to oblige her.

“You look so tired. You’ve been working so hard.” It occurs to her what he wants. “I could get you a post. Something with the books. That would suit you well – you’ve always been so clever.”

“That is very kind, my lady, but I understand if your lord husband does not-“

“My husband will find you a post.” She tries to sound decided, but her mind goes to her stomach. If I bear him an heir, she thinks. But she will. She will, she will. If she believes it enough, then perhaps it will be true. But then, she believed the songs, and so far, none of them have come true for her, either.

“You would do that for me?”

“I would do anything for you, Petyr.” There. She had not wanted to admit it, but it was the truth.

He studies her. For a moment, she fears he will pull away, but instead he brings his face very close to hers, where she can smell his breath. Mint. Young and alive.

“I have never given you your due, Lysa.” His voice sounds very sorry, and his hand goes to stroke her hair. She sinks into his touch. “You have been so loyal, so tender, and now they have left you here to freeze. What fate is that for a woman like you?”

 _They have left you here to freeze._ Her father, who killed her baby. Cat, who nearly killed her Petyr. _He was **our** Petyr_ , she thinks, _our friend, like a brother._ But Cat turned her back to him and left him to bleed on the banks. Family, duty, honor – Cat had not honored this boy, whom she had seen as too little for her respect. Too poor, too plain. She could have given him something. A word of comfort. A favor. But no – she had left him cold. _She should be in this ice palace; not I. Her heart is made of stone._

She licks her cold, chapped lips. When she looks into Petyr’s face, she sees a mirror of her own anticipation, her own hopefulness. He has an uncertainty to him, but she wants to make sure. “You – you left me.”

He grasps her hands. “No, no, you must not think that. Lysa – I would have done the honorable thing. It was your father who sent me away. He told me that you didn’t want me. That I was too – lowborn.”

Her emotion overcomes her, and she squeezes his hands. “I never believed them, Petyr. I never believed that – that you would do that to me. I – I apologize.”

He examines her with a small smile on his face. She tries to hold back tears.

“There’s no need to apologize for anything, Lysa.”

When his lips meet hers, Lysa thinks to draw away. This is not what she expected, but she knows, suddenly, that it is exactly what she wanted. This was why she slipped her lord husband sweetsleep in his sweet wine. _See_ , she wants to say, _I can be clever, too,_ but his fingers wind in her hair. She gasps before his mouth reclaims her and her words are lost.

She knows this is wrong. Family, duty, honor – what good has it done her? Cat, her father – they had honor. They think her ruined, but she knows better. Jon – Jon, whose hands are blue and slack, his eyes icy, distant, dead – he is not the husband of her heart. It is Petyr she loves, Petyr whose eyes are green as spring and whose smile is a secret she wants to share.

His fingers pry at her braids, then her moon-shaped clasp. He loosens her hair and leaves her arms bare. Her skin prickles in the cold.

He breaks from her and stares, instead. She feels bare. This time, he is completely sober.

He twists a strand of her hair between his fingers. “All the red has left your hair.”

“It is the cold. The pale sun.”

He smooths it again. “The firelight tints it,” he says softly, although the firelight is dying. “I hate to think of you wilting in this cold.”

“I cannot be cold anymore. Not with you.”

He sweeps her hair back and presses a kiss against her neck. His beard tickles. She misses him clean-shaven. She misses her past.

While one hand smooths her hair, the other tugs gently at her laces, until at last she stands entirely bare before him. Her breasts are swollen, like her arms. She does not want him to see. She does not want him to think that anything about her has changed at all.

“You now,” she says shyly. The room is so drafty that she wonders that her breath does not fog.

Petyr gives her a small smile. “No, my lady.”

“But-“

He pushes her down, and they fall on the bearskin rug. Her head aches, briefly, at the too-rough fall. But the cold fur feels like silk on her back; his touch, moreso. His words are their own caress, even as his fingers skim her neck, her breasts, her waist. “Sweetling - beautiful – love –“

He thrusts against her, and she arches against him. She goes limp and cries out against his neck, almost a sob. She realizes that, aside from Jon’s poor excuse for trying to get heirs on her, she has not been touched - not even embraced by her sister - in nearly a year.

 _No one loves me but Petyr,_ she thinks.

She knew it, though.

She knew he loved her.

Something out of the songs had to be true.

“Hush,” he says. His voice is thin and lovely. “Hush, love.”

She turns her head as he kisses her neck, wriggling and arching. She knows he likes her hair. She should be proud of how beautiful he finds her. Why should it imply anything, anymore? He has already been so tender, so loving-

His trail of kisses leads down her belly until it reaches between her legs. She squirms. “Petyr-“

He kisses hard, and she moans. “Petyr-“

He looks up. His eyes hold that old glimmer of mischief. “No, my lady?”

She kicks at him a bit, gently. He pulls back. “I only…” she puts her hand on his chest, where his scar must lay. _Gently._ Despite the cold, she feels a flush in her face. “I want to do it this way.”

He knows right away, what she means. He can see it in her eyes. “Lysa,” he warns, but she can see something working behind his eyes, some tantalizing thought, at which his lips part.

“Petyr.”

“You know it is a betrayal to your lord husband to suggest as much…”

His hand is climbing greedily over her bare skin, pinching at her waist, brushing her breast, until it twines in her hair. There, he pauses.

“I don’t care.” She tugs at his collar, where a silver mockingbird sits. “It’s all I want. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He kisses her sweetly. Then his kiss becomes hungry, exactly as she wants. “As you wish, my lady.”

“Lysa,” she says, but she can hardly hear herself between kisses and moans. When his breath catches and he moans, she feels herself catch fire.

He removes his doublet, but not the tunic beneath. Lysa can see the neat square of his shoulders, his smooth sinews. Most of all, she can see the shadow of a scar, larger and darker than she expected, through his shirt. She winces for him, but he has leaned back over her, where the dim fire does not shine, and his mouth is back on hers. She undoes the laces on his trousers.

“Do you like this, sweetling-?”

“Yes- yes, Petyr-“

“You’ll like it more when I’m inside of you, won’t you, love?”

“Yes-“

When he thrusts, her body arches, and she digs her nails into his back. She wants to leave marks. Those whores – those whores who taught him how to kiss between their legs – they will see these marks and know whose he is.

_Mine._

“Petyr – Petyr –“

Her moaning is obscene. It echoes in the large, drafty room, bouncing off windows and ringing in their ears. If her lord husband could hear her…

He won’t.

_Sweetsleep._

She feels wonderfully powerful, wonderfully alive.

“Hush,” Petyr says, “Hush. Hush, sweetling.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on the rocking.

“I – Petyr, oh –“

“Hush,”

“I love you,” she breathes.

He rocks harder, so much that the friction hurts. She digs her nails in, hoping to keep her hold, suddenly fearful. She knows that a part of him still belongs to Cat. But he has said that he loves her, too – and if she can have him, bodily, like man and wife, then what will Cat be, next to her? _I have given him everything._ She does not cry out. Even in the pain, the pleasure mounts.

He comes inside of her and stays there for a moment, going limp. He sighs, and it sounds like the whisper of leaves, back when she was a girl. The most perfect, natural sound. It isn’t until she hears it that she realizes how much she has missed it.

He lets her hold him, and she strokes his back through the thin shirt.

“You know I will always be here,” she says. “Whatever you need. I will take care of you, Petyr. I will be your benefactor. Until…”

He sits up. He smiles that patient, sweet smile, and kisses her forehead. “And I would spend forever in your arms. But should you not return to Lord Arryn?”

“I told him it was my moon blood.” She blushes. “And – he will be asleep. I promise you. I have made sure of it.”

He looks at her with something like interest.

“Tell me, sweet.”

She whispers it into his ear. His laughter is beautiful.

“You would truly do anything for me,” he says, awed. “Sweet Lysa.”

He kisses her one last time, so deeply she can feel it in her feet. 

~

“You look very tired.”

She does not answer at first. Instead she stabs the fabric and, slowly, drags the ivory thread through.

She stares at her stitches. It is a half-finished tableau; the Eyrie in wintertime. She has never seen it cold and icy, but she has heard of it: the way the mules parade down in the snow, the way the whole castle glimmers like a silver box. It sounds to her like a song. 

“I spoke to you, wife.”

Her husband’s voice is not unkind, but he sounds as though he addresses a wayward ward. Eddard Stark spoke fondly of Jon Arryn, as a boy might speak of a father, but to her Jon is little more than the lord of the Eyrie. _He thinks me naught more than a girl—child, a flighty bitch to bear his heirs._ For a moment she feels guilty about the sweetsleep. Then she feels vindicated. She thinks of Peter’s back, slick with sweat, tunic sticking. _He does not know what I am capable of._

She misses Petyr already. Aloud, she says:

“I miss my home.”

“That is unfortunate, but you must adapt. You are young yet. Jeyne was always a happy girl, but Rowena was like you - unhappy until she conceived. You will quit your petulance when you have a child.”

Petulance. She hates that word. His tone means well, but Lysa does not know how to tell him that she is disgusted; that she does not want to hear about his previous wives, or have them held up as paragons for her behavior. _The child was stillborn,_ she reminds herself. _I am sure Rowena Arryn was not so happy after all of that. Nor were you, my lord._

“My lord husband, I could not help but hear you remark that you needed a capable man to manage your interests near the coast.” The coast – so far away. But she will endure it. For Petyr.

Jon smiles. His wrinkles crinkle, but his gaze is bemused more than loving. _He thinks me silly, stupid. He has always thought me so. All because of my baby._

“I spoke to my steward, Lysa. Not to you.”

“I understand, my lord.”

“Ladies should not concern themselves with such things.”

“I agree, my lord. I only meant to suggest Petyr Baelish. He is clever and capable, and has been a loyal friend to my family. I am sure my father would be pleased.”

She can feel his watery eyes on her. She keeps her head down and continues her stitching, though her stitches have slowed to a cautious pace.

She does not know whether he knows or not. Her father had explained that Jon Arryn had deigned to accept her in spite of her ruin; she did not know if he had told Jon by whom she was spoiled. She can guess, though. Her lord father’s honor would not allow him to shame his friend and his ward – moreover, to admit that his judgement had failed. And would her lord husband have invited Petyr to his home if he had suspected him?

“I will consider it,” he says finally.

Lysa can hear it in his voice: he thinks it is a good idea. Her hand floats to her stomach, where she fleetingly rests it.

_Do you hear that, little one?_


End file.
